I was really deligthed to be invited to be the guest on the 250th episode of Tim Topham’s Top Music Pro podcast. I was invited to talk about a specific project I undertook with some of my students in early 2021 during the lockdown – my “Lockdown Mash-ups”.

In the episode I explain how I wanted to provide fun, engaging activtities for my students inspired by the music that they chose themselves – whilst also providing great learning opportunities.

In January 2021, as we entered the third lockdown, I asked my students to put together a playlist of their favourite top 5 or 10 songs – and I used these lists to choose different activties for our online lessons. For some students, I identified 2 or more songs from their lists which had the same chord progressions, and worked with the students in creating “mash-ups” of these songs – i.e. arranging them so that they seamlessly blended together. This involved transposing one or more of the songs into the same key as the other and then deciding on left hand patterns, chord arrangements etc.

In the episode we hear two examples – Keiva’s mash-up of Lewis Capaldi’s Someone You Loved and Imagine Dragon’s Demons; and Dan’s mash-up of Yiruma’s River Flows in You and Alan Walker’s Faded.

You can listen to the full episode here:

Or click here to listen on Apple podcasts.

Here’s Dan performing his mash-up:

And here’s Keiva’s: